crude
and my distinctions pitiful. "Good-night, my dear boy--don't bother
about it. After all, you do like a fellow."

"And a little intelligence might spoil it?" I still detained him.

He hesitated. "Well, you've got a heart in your body. Is that an element
of form or an element of feeling? What I contend that nobody has ever
mentioned in my work is the organ of life."

"I see--it's some idea about life, some sort of philosophy. Unless it
be," I added with the eagerness of a thought perhaps still happier,
"some kind of game you're up to with your style, something you're after
in the language. Perhaps it's a preference for the letter P!" I ventured
profanely to break out. "Papa, potatoes, prunes--that sort of thing?" He
was suitably indulgent: he only said I hadn't got the right letter. But
his amusement was over; I could see he was bored. There was nevertheless
something else I had absolutely to learn. "Should you be able, pen in
hand, to state it clearly yourself--to name it, phrase it, formulate
it?"

"Oh," he almost passionately sighed, "if I were only, pen in hand, one
of _you_ chaps!"

"That would be a great chance for you of course. But why should you
despise us chaps for not doing what you can't do yourself?"

"Can't do?" He opened his eyes. "Haven't I done it in twenty volumes? I
do it in my way," he continued. "You don't do it in yours."

"Ours is so devilish difficult," I weakly observed.

"So is mine. We each choose our own. There's no compulsion. You won't
come down and smoke?"

"No. I want to think this thing out."

"You'll tell me then in the morning that you've laid me bare?"

"I'll see what I can do; I'll sleep on it. But just one word more," I
added. We had left the room--I walked again with him a few steps along
the passage. "This extraordinary 'general intention,' as you call
it--for that's the most vivid description I can induce you to make of
it--is then generally a sort of buried treasure?"

His face lighted. "Yes, call it that, though it's perhaps not for me to
do so."

"Nonsense!" I laughed. "You know you're hugely proud of it."

"Well, I didn't propose to tell you so; but it _is_ the joy of my soul!"

"You mean it's a beauty so rare, so great?"

He hesitated a moment. "The loveliest thing in the world!" We had
stopped, and on these words he left me; but at the end of the corridor,
while I looked after him rather yearningly, he turned and caught sight
of my puzzled face. It m